10-Year Sentence In Resort Drug Overdose Case

SNOW HILL — A Westminster man, convicted in May of manslaughter for providing a female victim with a fatal dose of methadone and then slowly watching her die while on vacation in Ocean City last July, was sentenced to 10 years in jail last week.

After deliberating for over 10 hours following a two-day trial in Worcester County Circuit Court in May, a jury found Michael Thomas Dill, 30, guilty of manslaughter, distribution of methadone and reckless endangerment. Back in court last Friday, Dill was sentenced to 10 years each for the manslaughter and methadone distribution charge and the reckless endangerment charge was merged for sentencing.

Dill was found guilty of providing the victim, 31-year-old Quianna Dinkens, also of Westminster, with a lethal dose of methadone and then watching her slowly overdose in front of him and her young son while vacationing in Ocean City last July. Dill also admitted taking pictures of the victim as she slowly died because, he told police, he wanted to show her what she looked like the following day.

According to police reports, Dill, Dinkens and Dinkens’ young son, along with other family members, arrived in Ocean City last July 3 for a family vacation. Dill, who was undergoing treatment for heroin addiction, had with him an undisclosed amount of methadone, prescribed to him as part of his treatment. Methadone is often prescribed to heroin addicts as a means to wean them off of their addiction.

Dill was prescribed just enough methadone needed to get through his vacation in Ocean City and was ordered to keep it in a locked box to prevent others from accessing the powerful narcotic, according to police reports.

Around 12:17 a.m. last July 6, about three days into the planned seven-day vacation, Ocean City police responded to a residence on S. Heron Drive to assist EMS with an apparent overdose. OCPD officers arrived to find EMS technicians performing CPR on Dinkins, who was unresponsive and lying on the floor of the living room. Dinkins was taken to Atlantic General, where she had no pulse or blood pressure upon arrival. According to police reports, her low body temperature indicated she had been technically deceased for an extended amount of time before she was revived.

Dill told police when other family members left, Dinkins told him she wanted to get “messed up bad,” and he told her about the methadone he had brought with him on the trip. Dill told police he never saw the victim take any methadone, although he checked his supply and noticed some of it was missing. He also told police he knew Dinkins had taken the methadone because of the way she was acting.

Dill also told police he took pictures of the victim at various stages so he could show her what she looked like the next day. Those pictures were presented to the jury as evidence during the two-day trial in May. Dill also told police he wasn’t overly concerned with the victim’s downward spiral because he had seen her in that condition before and she always pulled out of it, according to police reports.

Dill told police he fell asleep around 11 p.m. and called to the victim to come to bed, but when he found her unresponsive on the floor, he knew something was wrong and decided to call 911. When asked why he waited to call 911, he told police he was thinking about calling earlier, but was afraid the victim would be mad at him when she recovered.

Meanwhile, the victim had been transported to the intensive care unit at AGH where a nuclear study revealed no brain flow.

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